Lord Prestimion Read online

  “And that is?”

  “A new journey that has to be undertaken.”

  A flicker of displeasure crossed Varaile’s face. “You’ll be traveling again so soon, Prestimion?”

  “Not just me. Us. This time you’ll be accompanying me.”

  She brightened at that. “Oh, much better! And where will we be going? Bombifale, perhaps? I’d love to see Bombifale. Or Amblemorn, maybe. They say that Amblemorn’s very strange and quaint, narrow winding roads and ancient cobblestoned streets—I’ve always wanted to see Amblemorn, Prestimion.”

  “We’ll be going farther than that,” he told her. “A great deal farther: to the Isle of Sleep, in fact. I’ve not seen my mother since my coronation, and she’s never seen my wife at all. We’re long overdue for a visit. She wants to meet you. And she says she has important matters to discuss with me. We’ll go by riverboat down the Iyann to Alaisor and sail to the Isle from there. This time of year that’s the best route.”

  Varaile nodded. “When do we leave?”

  “A week? Ten days? Will that be all right?”

  “Of course.” Then she smiled: a little ruefully, perhaps, Prestimion thought. “The Coronal never does get a chance to stay home at the Castle for long, does he, Prestimion?”

  “There’ll be all the time in the world for staying home later on,” he replied, “when I am Pontifex, and my home is at the bottom of the Labyrinth.”

  In the city of Stoien, at the tip of the Stoienzar Peninsula in far southwestern Alhanroel, Akbalik sat before a thick sheaf of bills of lading and cargo manifests and passenger lists and other maritime documents, wearily leafing through them in search of some clue to the location of Dantirya Sambail. He had done the same thing every day for the last three months. A copy of every scrap of paper that had anything to do with vessels traveling between Alhanroel and Zimroel found its way to the intelligence-gathering center that Akbalik, by order of Septach Melayn, had set up here in Stoien. By now he knew more about the price of a hundredweight of ghumba-root or the cost of insuring a shipment of thuyol berries against klegworms than he had ever imagined he would learn. But he was no closer to finding out anything about Dantirya Sambail than he had been the day he arrived.

  The despatches he was sending back to the Castle each week were becoming increasingly terse and cranky. Akbalik had been away in the provinces for months, passing what had begun to seem like an endless skein of pointless days among all these dreary strangers, first Ni-moya, now here. He was a famously even-tempered man, but even he had his limits. He was beginning to miss his life at the Castle tremendously. Nothing was being accomplished out here; it was time, he thought, and well past time, for him to be transferred back to the capital, and in the last couple of despatches he had made explicit requests to that effect.

  But no answers came. Septach Melayn was probably too busy keeping his dueling skills polished to bother reading his correspondence. Akbalik had written once to Gialaurys, but that was like writing to Lord Stiamot’s statue. As for the Coronal, Akbalik had heard that he had decided to make a pilgrimage to the Isle of Sleep to introduce his new wife to his mother, and was somewhere on the River Iyann, midway between the Mount and Alaisor, just now. So there was no hope at all of arranging a recall order, it seemed. Akbalik had no choice but to go on sitting here day after day, interminably sifting through his mountains of shipping documents.

  At least Stoien city was a cheery enough place to be stranded, if you had no alternative but to be stranded in some provincial outpost. Its climate was perfect, summertime warmth throughout the year, sweet air and cloudless skies, pleasant sea breezes from mid-morning through mid-afternoon, mild evenings, a delicious cooling sprinkling of rain every night precisely at midnight. The city itself was a thin strand spilling out for more than a hundred miles along the sweeping curve of its great harbor, so that a population of better than nine million was accommodated without any sense of crowding. And the place was a joy to look at. Because the whole of the Stoienzar Peninsula was entirely flat, never rising more than twenty feet above sea level at any point, the people of the port of Stoien had introduced topographical variety into their city by requiring that every building had to be erected atop a brick platform faced with white stone, and by decreeing wide variation in the dimensions of the platforms. Some were no more than ten or fifteen feet high, but others, farther back from the shore, were impressive artificial hills that rose to heights of hundreds of feet.

  Certain buildings of special importance stood in splendid isolation far above street level atop individual foundations; elsewhere, whole neighborhoods covering a square mile or more shared a single giant pedestal. The eye was kept in constant motion, faced as it was by pleasing alternations of high and low in every direction. And the effect of so much brick was softened by an abundance of bushes and vines and plants growing with tropical extravagance at the base of every platform, along the ramps that led to the higher levels, and clambering up the loftier walls. Those lush plantings afforded a brilliant show of color, not only the myriad different greens of their leaves, but the splendid indigo and topaz and scarlet and vermilion and violet of their innumerable flowers.

  A pretty place, yes. And Akbalik’s own office high up in the customs-house at the harbor afforded him a delightful view of the Gulf of Stoien, pale blue here, and smooth as glass. He was able to look northward for hundreds of miles, thousands, maybe, until the horizon intersected the planet’s great curve and turned everything to a thin gray line. But he longed for home all the same. He began to compose yet another missive to Septach Melayn in his head:

  “Esteemed friend and revered High Counsellor. Four months have passed, now, since I came to Stoien city at your behest, and in that time I have loyally and diligently labored at the task of—”

  “Prince Akbalik? Your pardon, prince, sir—”

  It was Odrian Kestivaunt, the Vroon who served as his secretary here. The little creature stood by the door, fidgety as always, his multitude of dangling tentacles coiling and uncoiling nervously in a way that Akbalik had had to train himself to tolerate. He was carrying yet another stack of papers.

  “More things for me to read, Kestivaunt?” said Akbalik, and made a sour face.

  “I have already looked these over, Prince Akbalik. And have discovered something quite interesting in them. They were taken from freighters departing from various Stoienzar ports for Zimroel in the past two weeks. If you will allow me, prince, sir—”

  Kestivaunt carried the papers to the desk and began to lay them out as though they were playing-cards in a game of solitaire. They were cargo manifests, Akbalik saw, long lists of commodities interspersed with some sea-captain’s comments on their condition as of the day they were taken on board, the quality of their packaging, and other such matters.

  Akbalik glanced over the Vroon’s sloping shoulders as the small being dealt the sheets out. So many quintals of honey-lotus, so many sacks of madarate gum, so many pounds of orokhalk, so many adzes, awls, axe-handles, pack-saddles, sledgehammers—

  “Is it really necessary for us to be doing this, Kestivaunt?”

  “One moment more, I entreat you, good prince. There. Now: I call your attention to the seventh line of the first manifest. Do you see what is entered there?”

  “‘Anyvug ystyn ripliwich raditix,’” Akbalik read, mystified. “Yes. I see it. But I don’t make any sense out of it. What is it, something in Vroonish?”

  “It’s more like Skandar than anything else, I would say. But not very much like Skandar. This is not, I think, any language spoken on Majipoor. But to continue, sir, if you will: line ten of this second manifest.”

  “‘Emijiquk gybpij jassnin ys.’—What is this gibberish, man?”

  “A coded message, perhaps? For look, look here, sir, line thirteen of the next paper: ‘Kesixm ricthip jumlee ayviy’ And line sixteen of the next: ‘Mursez ebumit yumus ghok.’ The nineteenth line of the next an orderly progression from sheet to sheet, is that not so?�
� The Vroon shuffled the papers excitedly, holding one and then another under Akbalik’s nose. “This nonsense is interpolated in otherwise ordinary texts at progressive intervals of three lines. We are missing, I think, the first two lines of the message, which would be on the first and fourth lines of documents we do not seem to have here. But it goes on and on: I have found forty lines of it so far. What could it be, if not a code?”

  “Indeed. It sounds too absurd to be anyone’s language. But there are codes and codes,” Akbalik said. “This could all be nothing but some merchant’s way of hiding trade secrets from his competitors.” He glanced at another sheet. Zinucot takttamt ynifgogi nhogtua. What if that meant, Ten thousand troops setting out next week? He felt a sudden quiver of excitement. “Or, on the other hand, what we have here might well be some sort of communication between Dantirya Sambail and his allies.”

  “Yes,” said the Vroon. “It might well be that. And codes are readily enough broken by those who are expert in that art.”

  “Are you referring to yourself, perhaps?” Vroons, Akbalik knew, had many divinatory skills.

  There came a writhing of tentacles in a gesture of negation. “Not I, sir. This is beyond me. But an associate of mine, a certain Givilan-Klostrin—”

  “That’s a Su-Suheris name, isn’t it?”

  “It is, yes. A man of unimpeachable honor, to whom such texts as these would be readily accessible.”

  “He lives here in Stoien?”

  “In Treymone, sir, the city of the tree-houses. That’s just a few days’ voyage up the coast from here, by way of—”

  “I know where Treymone is, thank you.” Akbalik paused in thought a moment. In these months of working together he had developed a good deal of trust in this Odrian Kestivaunt, but involving some unknown Su-Suheris in such an explosive affair was another matter entirely. A little behind-the-scenes research would be in order first. The double-headed folk all seemed to know one another. He would ask Maundigand-Klimd for an opinion before bringing in Givilan-Klostrin.

  Geenux taquidu eckibin oeciss. Emajiqk juqivu xhtkip ss.

  Akbalik pressed the tips of his fingers to his aching temples. Did this mumbo jumbo, he wondered, conceal the secret plans of Dantirya Sambail? Or was it merely the private lingo of some shaggy Skandar merchant mariner?

  Zudlikuk. Zygmir. Kasiski. Fustus.

  Off to Castle Mount went a query to the magus Maundigand-Klimd. Back from the Castle, in due course, came Maundigand-Klimd’s reply. Givilan-Klostrin, he said, was well known to him: a person in whom prince Abrigant could have absolute faith. “I vouch for him,” said Maundigand-Klimd, “as though he were my brother.”

  A sufficiently impressive recommendation, Akbalik decided. He sent for Odrian Kestivaunt. “Tell your Su-Suheris friend,” he said, “to get himself down to Stoien city right away.”

  But the sight of the actual Givilan-Klostrin made Akbalik wonder about the merit of Maundigand-Klimd’s endorsement.

  Maundigand-Klimd himself, for whom Akbalik had the highest respect, was a person of great dignity of bearing, indeed, of considerable personal grandeur, which was heightened by the monastic simplicity of his dress. Tastes in clothing at the Castle generally ran to the flamboyantly bright and bizarrely original, but Maundigand-Klimd mainly favored austere robes of black wool, or sometimes one of dark-green linen, with only a red sash to provide a bit of vivid color.

  This Givilan-Klostrin, though, arrived at Akbalik’s office clad in a grotesque patchwork outfit of gold-embroidered brocade decked with squares of blazing silk in half a dozen clashing colors, and his two long-crowned heads were topped with a pair of towering five-pointed hats whose tips reached almost to the ceiling of the room. Half a dozen huge round staring eyes with great swirling brows were painted on each of the hats, three in front, three behind. Rigid upjutting epaulets rose eight or ten inches from each of the oracle’s shoulders: they too were tipped with eyes, and narrow scarlet banners streamed downward from them.

  The whole effect was probably intended to be awesome, but Akbalik found it absurdly comical. It was something that a mendicant fakir might wear, a wandering beggar who told fortunes in the marketplace for a couple of crowns. The Su-Suheris was horrifyingly cross-eyed, besides, the left eye of his right head peering over toward the right eye of the left head in a way that made Akbalik’s insides squirm.

  I vouch for him as though he were my brother, Maundigand-Klimd had said. Akbalik shrugged. He would not have wanted a brother anything like Givilan-Klostrin; but, then, he was not a Su-Suheris.

  “I am the house of Thungma,” Givilan-Klostrin declared portentously, and waited.

  The Vroon had explained that part already. Thungma was the invisible spirit, the demon, the whatever-it-was, with whose consciousness Givilan-Klostrin made contact when he entered his divinatory trance. Givilan-Klostrin functioned as the “house” of the being during the time of his summoning.

  The Su-Suheris, who stood with feet planted wide and arms folded across his chest, seemed to fill the room. He stared icily at Akbalik.

  “The fee comes first,” Odrian Kestivaunt whispered. “This is extremely important.”

  “Yes. I understand that. Tell me, Givilan-Klostrin: what will this consultation cost?” Akbalik asked, feeling almost seasick as he struggled to make eye contact somehow with the magus.

  “Twenty royals,” the left head said immediately. His voice was deep and rumbling.

  It was a preposterous amount. Most people worked all year for less. An hour’s visit with a dream-speaker would cost no more than a couple of crowns; this was a hundred times as much. Akbalik began to protest, but a quivering of tentacles from the Vroon, and a whispered, “Sir—sir—” caused him to subside. The magus’s fee, Odrian Kestivaunt had told him several times already, was an essential part of the process. Any attempt to bargain would ruin the entire enterprise.

  Well, they weren’t his twenty royals. Akbalik took four gleaming five-royal pieces from his purse, the new ones showing Confalume in the Pontifex’s robes with Prestimion’s handsome profile on the reverse, and laid them on the desk. Givilan-Klostrin snatched them up smoothly and lifted them to his faces, pressing the coins against his outer cheekbones and holding them there a moment as though to satisfy himself that they were genuine.

  “Where are the documents?” the magus asked.

  Kestivaunt had prepared a page-long transcript of the coded lines he had found in the group of cargo manifests. Akbalik handed that to the Su-Suheris. He shook both of his heads at once, an effect that Akbalik found dizzying, and demanded the originals. Akbalik looked toward Kestivaunt, who went scurrying out, tentacles thrashing in agitation, and returned a few moments later with the papers. Givilan-Klostrin took them from him. Akbalik had to fight back laughter at the sight of the seven-foot-tall Su-Suheris solemnly reaching far down toward the tiny Vroon, who was barely eighteen inches high.

  Givilan-Klostrin now opened a case he had brought with him and began to set his conjuring apparatus out on a bench. Akbalik felt some surprise at that, for he knew that Maundigand-Klimd performed his own divinations without the aid of a lot of gadgetry, and in fact had often expressed scorn for such devices. Perhaps this was all part of the show, he thought, a justification for that staggering twenty-royal fee. He watched as Givilan-Klostrin put out five cones of incense and lit them, instantly filling the room with clouds of cloyingly sweet smoke. Next the magus brought forth a little metal dome and tapped a projection at its tip, which caused it to emit a steady bell-like tone. A second such device placed beside the first produced the deep, low sound of far-off chanting; a third yielded an eerie, reverberant sound that might have been created by blowing into conical sea-shells.

  Givilan-Klostrin handed a fourth such dome to Akbalik, and a fifth to the Vroon. “You will touch their triggers,” he said gravely, “at the appropriate moment. You will know when that moment has arrived.”

  Akbalik was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable. The sickeni
ng aroma of the incense, the hypnotic music of the bells and shells, the chanting—it was all rapidly getting to be too much for him.

  But there was no turning back. The process, the very expensive process, was under way.

  Givilan-Klostrin was holding Kestivaunt’s stack of cargo manifests clasped between the outspread fingers of his hands, one hand above, one below. All four of his eyes were closed. From both his throats came a strange, unsettling gargling sound, its doubled rhythms and eerie harmonies coordinated in a weird way with the distant chanting. He seemed almost to have fallen asleep. Then, gradually, his body began to sway and his legs started to quiver. He leaned a long way backward, inclining his heads so that they pointed toward the floor behind him, and stood straight again, and leaned once more, repeating the movement over and over.

  Suddenly Odrian Kestivaunt, without having received any perceptible cue, tapped the jutting tip of the little metal dome he was holding. From it there came the sonorous blast of giant trumpets, a sound that expanded through the room with a force that seemed capable of bending the walls. To his own surprise Akbalik felt himself impelled then by some powerful inner force to touch the trigger of his own dome, and, when he did, it gave off a series of tremendous deafening cymbal-clashes. The hubbub all around them was astounding. He felt as though he had somehow been whisked off into the very midst of the thousand-instrument orchestra of the Ni-moya opera house.

  Rivers of sweat flowed down Givilan-Klostrin’s faces. Akbalik had never seen a Su-Suheris perspire before: he hadn’t known they even were capable of it. The magus’s breath was coming in harsh huffing gasps. Blood had begun to ooze from his nose and mouth. He was clutching the documents, now, tightly against his chest.

  As the sounds emanating from the five metal domes mounted in intensity, Givilan-Klostrin went reeling drunkenly around the room, flinging his heads back and lifting his knees almost to his chest with every lurching stride. Savage growling sounds came from him. He went crashing into tables and chairs without appearing to notice. When one sturdy chair in particular seemed to draw his anger—he had stumbled into it three times—he raised one foot and brought it crashing down with such astonishing force that the chair went flying into a host of splintered pieces. It was an extraordinary feat. Truly he was a man possessed, Akbalik thought.